Wings

Sue Monk Kidd writes that her first encounter with Sarah and Angelina Grimké came during an exhibition of Judy Chicago's artwork "The Dinner Party" in 2007. The sisters are included in a list of 999 important women in history and mythology, their names inscribed on the "Heritage Floor" of the installation. Kidd, author of "The Secret Life of Bees" and "The Mermaid Chair," writes that she was startled to discover the sisters were from Charleston, S.C., her home at the time. The Grimkés, she learned, were abolitionists and "among the earliest major American feminist thinkers.

SAN JOSE - At 21, Matt Nieto still looks very much like a college student talking about coming home for Christmas or spring break. But while Nieto happens to be employed by a successful hockey team, he still opts for comfort when he comes home to Long Beach. Where does he go first? "In-N-Out," Nieto said, smiling, answering without hesitation. "Every time I go home, the first place I go is In-N-Out. " You can take the kid out of Southern California, but you can't quite take all of Southern California out of the kid. Never mind that they have plenty of those burger spots in Northern California and San Jose.

HONOLULU - In primaries across the country - in Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi and other states - Republicans are locked in a heart-and-soul battle between purists and pragmatists clashing over what it means to represent the party, its philosophy and core values. Here in Hawaii there's a similar fight over power and purpose, but this one is between Democrats. It's a fight for a U.S. Senate seat, a rare enough prize in a state that has elected just six people senator since statehood in 1959.

Wings take on a role of their own in "Legion," as God sends his army of flocked angels to bring on the apocalypse. "The wings define the angels, so we wanted to create them as weapons as well as for flight and push the idea of angels as warriors," said visual effects supervisor Joe Bauer, referring to the 12- to 14-foot wing spans of Archangel Michael and Gabriel. Early in the conception stage, a metallic look was considered, using a material that matched the Archangel's gladiator-type costumes.

The march of the penguins seems to mock evolution. If Emperor penguins just got up and flew 40 miles, they could get to their mates in no time flat. Why would evolution abide a tedious waddle across the ice? It turns out there's method in the seeming madness of these blubbery short-winged pedestrian birds. Penguins long ago faced a steep trade-off between the high calorie costs of flight and low energy expenditure of using their wings to swim. They dived into an "adaptive fitness valley" of evolution that fly-and-dive ocean birds such as murres and cormorants still straddle, according to a team of Canadian and American zoologists.

One of the favorites for a best picture Oscar nomination this year is the black-and-white silent French film "The Artist. " And if the story about the infancy of talkies in Hollywood does earn the top Academy Award, "The Artist" will be the first silent to win the honor since the very first best picture winner, 1927's World War I epic "Wings," directed by William Wellman. In honor of the 85th anniversary of "Wings" and the centennial of Paramount Pictures, the studio that produced the classic, the film starring Buddy Rogers, Richard Arlen, Clara Bow and a young Gary Cooper has been digitally restored.

Comet ISON appears to have sprouted wings. Two wing-shaped features in the thin atmosphere around the head of Comet ISON were detected earlier this week by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany. You can see them in the image above -- it looks almost like a cartoon angel gliding through the night sky. The wings in the image were not immediatley visible to the naked eye, however. They were revealed after the researchers eliminated the uniformly bright background of the comet's atmosphere in the image, uncovering the fainter structures that it was outshining.

Kauai's Na Pali Coast is too rugged for roads, but it can be admired by land, sea and air. For some travelers, it is the most compelling part of the North Shore. Land options: The Kalalau Trail begins in Haena State Park, next to Kee Beach, at the end of Kuhio Highway. It's 11 miles each way, muddy and steep. The path, full of rocks and wayward roots, climbs slopes, dips to the beach and crosses five valleys. If you want to hike six or more miles of it, you'll need enough food and gear to camp at least one night, perhaps two or three.

One season under the NHL's realigned conference setup probably was enough for Eastern teams to veto future additions from the West. The Detroit Red Wings and Columbus Blue Jackets, who moved from the West to the East before this season, won their new conference's two wild-card playoff berths. The Red Wings will make their 23rd consecutive postseason appearance, and the Blue Jackets will make their second appearance in franchise history. First place in the East - and overall - went to the Boston Bruins, with the Ducks winning the No. 1 spot in the West.

"I felt a creative spirit the first time I walked in this house," says Rina Welles of the 1921 Santa Monica house that was once home to renowned German playwright Bertolt Brecht. "I liked the energy. " The foursquare house was where Brecht penned "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" and other plays during the 1940s. Today the house is one component in a multigenerational family compound for Welles, husband David Golubchik, her mother, Joanna, and their children, Leah, 10, and Alek, 6. The home, which has been renovated and complemented by a new addition by Dub Studios , also stands as a success story for preserving cultural landmarks in fresh and inviting ways.

Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Films has produced just one movie in the last 15 years ("The Great Debaters"), and Winfrey herself has starred in just one film of her own ("Lee Daniels' The Butler). But Harpo on Tuesday made a big move on the development front, acquiring the film rights to Sue Monk Kidd's bestseller “The Invention of Wings.” Kidd's slavery-era novel looks at the contrasting stories of a preteen abolitionist and the slave she is given, following the two as they and the world around them changes over the next three decades.

Boeing Co. has notified airlines that a change in a supplier's manufacturing process may have resulted in hairline cracks on the wings of about 40 of its yet-to-be-delivered 787 Dreamliners. Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. told Boeing there was a problem related to fasteners on the 787's carbon fiber composite wing. Boeing, which has delivered 123 of the planes, said the problem may be present in a limited number of airplanes still in production, but none of its in-service fleet is involved.

JERUSALEM - Emerging from a black limousine, the tall man in the bushy gray wig lectures a small crowd of Israelis on how their holy city of Jerusalem belongs to followers of all religions - "Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Klingons and Hobbits. " He asks a young passerby, "Do you think I deserve a Nobel Prize?" The two-minute spoof video, released on YouTube this week by ultranationalist Israelis, is the latest sign of how critics of a possible Mideast peace deal have focused their ire on the effort's chief champion, U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry.

If you're a bird that likes to build mud nests in dangerous places, such as highway bridges and overpasses, how do you avoid fatal encounters with cars and trucks? You quickly get out of their way. And it helps if you have shorter wings, which allow for a more vertical takeoff. A paper published March 18 in the journal Current Biology suggests that the wingspan of cliff swallows in a Nebraska study has shortened as an evolutionary response to the hazards of highway dwelling. The number of road-killed swallows dropped sharply over a 30-year period at the same time as the average wing length in the swallow population showed a long-term decline, according to the research.

Some of the earliest birds hailing from the age of the dinosaurs may have sported four flying limbs, a team of Chinese researchers says. If so, 11 fossils from the lower Cretaceous period, about 120 million years ago, could represent a missing link in the development of modern birds, according to a new paper released Thursday by the journal Science. Modern birds generally work with two wings, using small, clawed hind legs for ground travel. A few, like the golden eagle, have fuzzy down on their back limbs, which is for insulating their appendages, not flying.

WASHINGTON - As President Obama looks to show off all he can do without Congress, he's been pointing to a surprising place for guidance on the savvy use of power: the other side of the White House. In public and private, the president has been holding up Michelle Obama's initiatives in the East Wing as a template for how the West Wing could accomplish a policy agenda the non-legislative way. He has called his wife's team a model for what's possible, and, in his State of the Union address last week, he said, "As usual, our first lady sets a good example.

MEXICO CITY - Salvadorans vote Sunday in a presidential election that may give former leftist rebels a second chance at government - or return national leadership to the right-wing party that ruled the country for two decades. Opinion surveys have shown an extremely tight race, especially with the entrance of a new third party run by a former conservative president with family members tied to notorious corruption cases. More than 20 years after the end of a civil war in which more than 75,000 people were killed, choices remain stark in El Salvador, the tiny Central American country that, after Mexico, is the leading source of Spanish-speaking immigrants in Southern California.